RE: Property is not a "Western concept," but a natural reality - Thoughts on Christian missionary killed near India by isolated tribe
I agree that property is a universal concept. Even animals are territorial. Defending a territory and family is basic survival. Yet like anything there is a balance needed if we want to live in peace. Where do you draw that line which says you've gone too far by deciding everything is yours if you just take it? These debates always bring up so many grey areas, don't they.
Recently I was learning about the aboriginal tribes in Australia when the first settlers came in. Many were cannibals and, naturally, saw their settlers as food. Many settlers were quite peaceful and tried to trade with them and learn from them, but you can imagine that they saw red when they started killing and eating their friends. This was when parties of westerners started going out and wiping out tribes.
On the one hand you could say that the aboriginals drove them to this, but on the other you can say that the settlers did come onto their territory, in the same way we can say, if you don't want to be killed by a shark, don't swim where they live. To us, cannibalism was unacceptable, to them it was simply survival. The settlers weren't aware that they were cannibals at the time of settling, but then they were stepping somewhere they didn't necessarily belong.
Thanks for anther thought provoker.
Thank you, @minismallholding. Yes, like I say in the vid, there are always gray areas. However, the state is a giant, chaotic, bloodstained gray area, and instead of attempting to base societies on that “divine right” or “majority vote” hocus pocus, the only objective means by which violent conflict can be minimized is to have a universalizable property norm in any given society. There will always be gray areas and violence, as you point out, but it is not necessary to make these gray areas and violence the foundational structure upon which the society is to be built.
Objective realities such as individual self-ownership and scarcity of rivalrous resources works much better.
The feeling is mutual, by the way, and your comment on the Aboriginal people of Australia has got me thinking as well.